The fall of the city of Femmer was sudden, but it was also expected in the kingdom. The kingdom did not expect the city of Femir to be able to hold back the opponent for long, but only hoped to consume as many of their forces as possible in the path of the opponent's advance. It's just that the three legions have lost most of their troops, but the other party has lost those endless skeleton soldiers, so the kingdom's top brass is very disappointed.

The city of Femmer had fallen, and the southern rebels, less than seventy kilometers from the capital Mantas, had more than 100,000 troops and were getting stronger. But on the kingdom's side, the number of troops is already very insufficient, the population of the Subic Kingdom is only a little more than 10 million, and in the two years of war, the army has been damaged more than 100,000, the kingdom's new force has been almost lost, and the garrison forces in various places are also insufficient, except for the last elite maintained by the royal family, Subic has no army that can be mobilized.

The local lords also made a move, except for those die-hard loyalists of the Subic royal family, the rest of the nobles began to find excuses to refuse the royal family's dispatch, and some even began to contact the rebels in the north and south in order to find a way back for themselves. King Salondran had been suppressing the local noble lords since he succeeded to the throne, and finally established a strong position in the royal family, and all of them were overthrown in more than a year. The areas that still absolutely support the crown are less than a third of what is now left of the kingdom.

On the day of the defeat of the army and the return of General Seon Horner, His Majesty the King himself went into the bedroom alone, and no one was allowed to enter. That night, the queen stayed at the door of her bedroom all night, listening to the sound of broken objects all night. When His Majesty came out the next morning, the Queen saw that his eyes were red and swollen, and his hair was white, as he had never been so embarrassed since His Majesty had succeeded to the throne.

But the war still had to be fought, and the other side did not accept the royal family's terms of peace negotiations at all, even if the kingdom ceded a large area of land north of the White Oak to them. Moreover, they also brought up the issue of inheritance again, brought Princess Avelia to the table again, and won the support of some nobles for this reason.

Now the biggest obstacle to the opponent's biggest advance is no longer the kingdom's army, but the aristocratic forces that are loyal to the royal family or unwilling to give up their existing power. These nobles have intricate relationships and have their own vassal lords, and if they attack the rebels, the rebels will face a large number of nobles who have come for their own purposes. The countryside is full of enemies, and it is impossible to even distinguish friend from foe. So although these nobles were dissatisfied with the rule of the royal family, they also became the biggest reliance on Salondron to delay time.

However, it was also clear to Salondron that these troops would not last long.

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I really didn't expect the army to reach Mantas before, but I met so many nobles who disobeyed us on the way to the march. Although I sometimes feel that my thoughts are a little conservative, but I am also a modern visitor, and I have no good feelings about these aristocratic forces, and it would be best if I could eradicate them.

But once I started to do it, I realized how difficult it was to wipe out all these nobles. Just like the problems in our occupied territories before, the private armies of the nobles, large and small, will cause us a lot of trouble. The great nobles organized armies to go to war with our advance troops, and their vassals also opposed our rule in their village fiefdoms and attacked our garrisons, and our troops suffered a lot of losses and could hardly gain a foothold.

I overestimated the ideological consciousness of these commoners, although our action against the aristocracy was approved by them, and the policy of allocating land to them was also supported by them, but the inhabitants of the central part of the country had a very low degree of responsibility for us, and they did not mess with us in any way, but they did not support us, and were suspicious of our policy, believing that what we were doing was only temporary, and did not help us at all.

Although our army is very strong, if these local powerful factions do not recognize us, then our rear will not be truly stable, and it will take a year or two to wipe them all out, and it will only take longer to clean up the mess.

So we had to retreat and raise my sister's banner again, so that our march would not be a rebellion of the plebeians, but a war between the nobles, and the nobles who had always opposed Salondran would change their attitude towards us and choose to cooperate with us.

For those high-ranking nobles who occupy the territories, we have chosen to give them more decent treatment after capturing them, and although we have recovered their domains and forbidden hereditary inheritance, some of their privileges can still be preserved, and their property will not be infringed upon. In spite of this very painful to me, these nobles reluctantly agreed to our terms, and with our military superiority, they promised not to trouble us, and some of them even sent hostages, and our troops would watch over them to ensure that our rear would not catch fire.

We sent tribal royalty and high-ranking knights like Louie to negotiate with them and attend their banquets, and although the two sides came from different worlds, Louie's manners and royal temperament still made the other party unable to find a problem, and finally agreed to negotiate the terms of the "future queen".

As for the low-ranking nobles, we used more temptations, and among them the young nobles were the majority, many of them were the same age as me, they did not think much about the consequences, they did not pay attention to the cost, they were full of ambition, and they were full of desire for power. When the older generation of nobles was suppressed by us, the vacated rights needed to be taken over, and these young nobles were very willing to cooperate with us. For the sake of power, they are even willing to frame their own brothers, turn against their friends, and imprison their fathers.

And those small nobles who are not the power of the big family are gradually relieved of our arrangement. Because their titles are very low, it will be difficult for them to inherit their own family titles and territories even if we do not decree them. And the conditions we offered them were much better than what they are now. They were no longer at the bottom of the aristocracy, but the real power officials of one side, competing with each other for power with the young nobles who had gained power.

For a time there was a bunch of neutral powerful families and a large group of young nobles vying for power in our rear, and the rear was in chaos, but the battle on our front was also guaranteed. Our army doesn't have to deal with the nobles endlessly, just focus on a few major Subic nobles. As for the troops of the minor nobles, they did not have time to oppose us, and under our arrangement, they fell into mutual opposition and hostility, and even used force to fight themselves.

The rebellion against us has not stopped, but it will not last long.

Our sharp blade has been aimed at Mantas, the capital of Subic.